Justin Levitt

BA, magna cum laude, Harvard College
JD/MPA, magna cum laude, Harvard Law School / Harvard Kennedy School
 

A national expert in civil rights, constitutional law, and the law of democracy, Justin Levitt is currently on leave from Loyola Law School, serving as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Background

Before his leave, Levitt had published in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law and Policy Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, the William & Mary Law Review, and the peer-reviewed Election Law Journal, among others.  He served as a visiting faculty member at the Yale Law School, at USC's Gould School of Law, and at Caltech.  He was honored to receive Loyola's Excellence in Teaching Award for 2013-14.

Levitt has been invited to testify before committees of the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, several state legislative bodies, and both federal and state courts.  His research has been cited extensively in the media and the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.  He maintained the website All About Redistricting, tracking the process of state and federal redistricting around the country, including litigation.

Levitt served in various capacities for several presidential campaigns, including as the National Voter Protection Counsel in 2008, helping to run an effort ensuring that tens of millions of citizens could vote and have those votes counted. Before joining the faculty of Loyola Law School, he was counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, for five years.  He also worked as in-house counsel to the country's largest independent voter registration and engagement operation, and at several nonprofit civil rights and civil liberties organizations. 

At Loyola, Levitt directed the Practitioner Moot Program, a complimentary service to the community allowing attorneys with pending appellate matters to practice their arguments before faculty experts and experienced advocates.  Under the program, Loyola hosted recent moots for cases later argued in the Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit, the California Supreme Court, the California Court of Appeal, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Levitt served as a law clerk to the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  He holds a law degree and a masters degree in public administration from Harvard University, and was an articles editor for the Harvard Law Review.  He is admitted to the bar in California, New Jersey, New York, and the District of Columbia, and to the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit and Eleventh Circuit, and the U.S. District Courts in the Central District of California and Northern District of Florida.

Selected Scholarship

Articles

• Problems of Public Purpose  (in progress)
• Quick and Dirty: The New Misreading of the Voting Rights Act
  
• Electoral Integrity: The Confidence Game, 89 N.Y.U. L. Rev. Online 70 (2014).
• The Partisanship Spectrum, 55 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1787 (2014).
• “Fixing That”: Lines at the Polling Place, 28 J.L. Pol. 465 (2013).
• Section 5 As Simulacrum, 123 Yale L. J. Online 151 (2013).
• You’re Gonna Need a Thicker Veil, 65 Fla. L. Rev. F. (2013).
• Democracy on the High Wire: Citizen Commission Implementation of the Voting Rights Act, 46 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1041 (2013).
• The New Wave of Election Regulation: Burden without Benefit, 6 Advance 39 (2012).
• Resolving Election Error: The Dynamic Assessment of Materiality,  54 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 83 (2012)
    (also edited for inclusion in Legal Workshop, Oct. 30, 2012).
• Election Deform: The Pursuit of Unwarranted Electoral Regulation, 11 Election L.J. 97  (2012).
• Fault and the Murkowski Voter: A Reply to Flanders, 28 Alaska L. Rev. 41 (2011). 
• Weighing the Potential of Citizen Redistricting, 44 Loyola L.A. L. Rev. 513 (2011). 
• Confronting the Impact of Citizens United, 29 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev. 217 (2010). 
• Long Lines at the Courthouse: Pre-Election Litigation of Election Day Burdens, 9 Election L.J. 19 (2010) (peer-reviewed). 
• Seeing Double Voting: An Extension of the Birthday Problem, 7 Election L.J. 111 (2008) (co-authored with Michael P. McDonald) (peer-reviewed).
• Taking the "Re" Out of Redistricting: State Constitutional Provisions on Redistricting Timing, 95 Geo. L.J. 1247 (2007)
    (co-authored with Michael P. McDonald).

Monographs and Book Chapters

• Novel (and Not-so-Novel) Alternatives to Legislative Redistricting, in America Votes! A Guide to Modern Election Law and Voting Rights (Benjamin E. Griffith ed., 2d ed. 2012).
• Redistricting and the West: The Legal Context, in Redistricting and Reapportionment in the West (Gary F. Moncrief ed., 2011).
• A Citizen’s Guide to Redistricting (2d ed., Brennan Center for Justice 2010).
• How Data is [sic] Used by Advocates, in Data for Democracy (Paul Gronke & Michael Caudell-Feagan eds., 2008).
• The Truth About Voter Fraud (Brennan Center for Justice 2007).

In the News

Levitt has been invited to testify as an expert on election law before committees of the U.S. Senate (video here and here, statements here, here, and here); the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; federal and state courts; state legislative bodies in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Texas (here, here, and here), Washington, and Wisconsin; and local bodies in Los Angeles County and Dallas.

Levitt has also appeared in film, TV (domestic and international), radio, and podcast, and has been quoted as an election law and redistricting expert by numerous newspapers, magazines, and news services, including the Associated Press, Reuters, New York Times, Wall St. Journal, Washington Post, New Yorker, USA Today, The Hill, The Nation, Politico, Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee, Miami Herald, Kansas City Star, Houston Chronicle, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Palm Beach Post, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and St. Petersburg Times.

Levitt has also published many shorter opinion pieces, including in the New York Times, Washington Post, SCOTUSblog, Politico, The Hill, Roll Call, Pacific Standard, and the Huffington Post; he has also been a regular contributor to Summary Judgments, the Election Law Blog, the ACSblog, and the Brennan Center for Justice blog.

Public Service

Levitt served as the faculty advisor for the Loyola chapter of the American Constitution Society, and is an avid supporter of public interest work.  He was an Advisor for the Course of Study in Law and the Political Process, and was the co-chair of Loyola's Faculty Workshops and the faculty advisor for the Loyola Law Review.  In 2015, he served on the Search Committee for Loyola's next Dean, and also served on the Curriculum Committee and Instructional Technology Committee.  Beyond Loyola, he regularly provided assistance to legislators and administrators from both major political parties, and represented officials and former officials from both major political parties in court.  He also served as a member of the Advisory Committee to the Los Angeles County Voting Systems Assessment Project.